This invention relates to traffic management in telephone systems and more particularly to dynamic traffic management in an intelligent network (IN) of a telephone system.
In presently operating systems, as in European Telecommunication Standardization Institute (ETSI)-INAP, or ITU (CS-IR and CS-2) Traffic Management is manually initiated when the service or network management center has detected a congestion situation or any other situation that requires manually initiated controls. In this situation the personnel at the Network Management Center would have to make a decision as to whether the number of failed calls over specific routes exceeded limits, before invoking the appropriate service logic at the SCP to send a Call Gap command and/or an ActivateServiceFiltering (ASF) command to filter calls over specific routes.
Alternatively, with the known ETSI-INAP operations, the SCP can make a decision for Automatic Call Congestion through indirect methods such as arming EDP-4R in every IN call and thereafter keeping a counter at the SCP""s end in order to make the decision on the number of failed calls over a period of time before deciding to send a CallGap or ASF. The filtering criteria is done either based on the CalledAddressValue and/or Service Key when the triggering criteria is met, after the call hits any of the TDPsxe2x80x94TDP2, TDP3,TDP4 etc. With ITU CS-IR TDP4 can be armed in a Notification mode, which can then be used to monitor failed calls over a route. However these methods would unnecessarily increase the traffic over SS7 link between SSP and SCP.
Abbreviations used herein:
ASFxe2x80x94Activate Service Filtering
ASN-1xe2x80x94Abstract Syntax Notation Number One
A infoxe2x80x94Analyze Information
A""d infoxe2x80x94Analyzed Information
BCSMxe2x80x94Basic Call State Model
CS1xe2x80x94Capability Set 1
CS1xe2x80x94Capability Set 1
CS2xe2x80x94Capability Set 2
EDPxe2x80x94Event Detection Point
ERBCSMxe2x80x94Event Report BCSM
INAPxe2x80x94Intelligent Network Application Protocol
INxe2x80x94Intelligent Network
ITUxe2x80x94International Telecommunication Union
RRBCSMxe2x80x94Request Report BCSM
RSFxe2x80x94Route Select Failure
SCPxe2x80x94Service Control Point
SS7xe2x80x94Signaling System #7
SSPxe2x80x94Service Switching Point
TCxe2x80x94Transaction Capabilities
TDPxe2x80x94Trigger Detection Point
Briefly stated, in accordance with one aspect of the invention, the foregoing problem of the art is overcome and an advance in the art is achieved by providing a method of traffic management using an intelligent network node, such as a Service Control Point, (SCP). This method provides a way by which an SCP can make an intelligent decision by monitoring the traffic over specified routes.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the aforementioned problems are overcome and an advance in the art is achieved by providing a method and apparatus for managing call traffic in a system having a service switching point (SSP) connected to a service control point (SCP) comprising the steps of: sending a traffic monitoring initiation request from the SCP to the SSP; monitoring call traffic at the SSP according to the traffic monitoring request; sending a response to the SCP including results of said monitoring; determining from said results if traffic management needs to be applied; and if traffic management needs to be applied, applying traffic management.